NetKitChen: My home Office Lab

Do you know Scott Morris? Yes probably, look at his Ubber lab!!!!!

Scott Morris is my idol, this man is a networking Gig. Amazing, his qualification are!!!! Look at his resume, and it goes on and on. 4 times CCIE, believe me 4 times. I know some few other people have achieve it, but this guy’s curriculum Vitae is heart backing and scary to 90% of employers out there.

When I first saw his lab on the internet, I could not believe someone would keep such equipment in his at home. But read his stories and followed his advices, and let me tell you that they paid off! The more I when on studying computers and networking in particular, I understood the benefits of having a real routers and switches.

I have worked with fellow students and classmates, very smart guys and even smarter than I am. Reading books is a very good thing, but relying on them only is not enough. We all know how lab sessions are run in colleges or universities! Many won’t allow students to use the lab outside the lab cessions, and will rely on virtual labs such as the Cisco packet tracer or the Graphic Network Simulator GNU3. GNU3 is a freeware, open-source, that can be downloaded free of charge.

Simulations are good tools for your certifications and work most of the times, but real gears do not always work the way you want as there can be many logical and physical constraint.

My point is that not having hands on real gears is not ideal for a computer network student. Having HANDS-ON real router, switches, etc. will strengthen your knowledge. As I said before, I have helped a lot of smarter classmates, just because I own the lab shown below. A lab will allow you to practice, gain confidence, and eliminate fear. I can assure you that a lot of University students are confused when they see a router or a switch; some do not know how to identify a DCE and DTE. If the device is password protected, it is game over.

My first cisco gear was a Cisco 2511 router, bought from an eBay seller and was password protected. The first impression was a disappointment, how on earth does someone sell a router that is password protected? I then realised that some eBay sellers don’t have the technical knowledge about the items they are selling. I spent 1 day researching and trying to use the Ctrl+Break keys to enter the ROM Monitor, and in the end I did it. But it does not end there, doing this in a regular basis allowed me the master the process and discover and build some few tips of my own.

So below is my home lab, this lab keeps me busy...